Valve has toyed with Half-Life in virtual reality

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Don't get too excited, but Valve has been experimenting with various elements of Half-Life in virtual reality. The company admitted it's been taking characters, weapons and other elements, chucking them into VR, and seeing what it can come up with.

"We've said, 'Let's take some existing art and see how it fits," Valve programmer Jeep Barnett told Kotaku.

"So yeah, we'll grab some headcrabs, we'll grab the machine guns from Half-Life, the rocket launcher - all those different fun things - and see how they play in VR. But right now, it's a tool for exploring the different kind of game designs we want to do."

It's worth noting that people have already modded Half-Life 2 and Portal 2 for the Oculus Rift, but would Valve be interested in doing it properly for the HTC Vive?

"We're not saying 'no," said Barnett, "but we don't know what the right thing is [yet]. Our most precious resource is time, and we don't have enough time for people to do everything. Would we like to make all our franchises in VR? Absolutely. But we don't have enough time or people. So we have to figure out what's the best fit, what plays to the strengths of VR."

Barnett said that Valve has experiments with Left 4 Dead and DOTA 2 in VR, and of course there's also the Portal demo that has been used to demonstrate the Vive. He added that a version of that demo will likely launch alongside Vive later in the year.